Dishonored is built on the principles of a past era of PC gaming, when titles like System Shock 2, Deus Ex and Thief dominated the conversation. In recent years there's been a resurgence of this style of design with games like BioShock and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, games that can't be satisfyingly labeled with any single genre tag, that encompass multiple gameplay styles and encourages player choice instead of adherence to a rigidly defined path.
Harvey Smith worked at Ion Storm as a lead on the original Deus Ex. Now he's co-creative director on Dishonored, and very interested in continuing to develop along the lines of his past work. "We love these cohesive worlds where every single detail supports where you're at. You can very much approach the game either very fast-paced or very slowly, exploring, studying, pulling up extra details about the world. It's very much a player-paced game."
In part that's why Arkane did so much research for developing the look of Dishonored, drawing from extensive on-location research in England and Scotland to create its fictional city of Dunwall. Arkane's art team, led by director Sebastien Mitton and Zenimax visual design director Viktor Antonov, who worked with Valve to develop Half-Life 2's City 17, wanted to merge a stylized London-like city with steampunk elements, which affects everything from the ornate clothing styles to the sharp lines of the machines to help distinguish the setting. They even imported the faces of real urban construction workers and club bouncers to serve as the faces of non-playable characters to ensure nothing felt copied and pasted.
"With Google Earth, there's very little mystery left in geography," said Antonov. "Any kid can go on Google Earth and check out any place. I really like adventure, I like mystery. When everything is so accessible, let's come up with new worlds…In the spirit of designing non-existing cities there's Metropolis, there's Blade Runner, as ambitious as this may sound…we'd love to be the next place. We were going to have this thing happen in a London-like place, but then we said London doesn't look good enough for our game. Let's do something better."
Taking on the task of building a fictional world from scratch presented numerous challenges for Antonov and the team at Arkane, such as balancing Dunwall's fantastical aspects with familiar, grounding elements. "If they're too strange or too original, [fictional cities] may not appeal to anybody," said Antonov. "We have to strike a balance between accessibility and overall appeal…Every dock, every chair, everything was designed by hand because we wanted to hand craft this, as opposed to the procedural method of making games. This is a steampunk, Victorian world, but it doesn't have any rivets, it doesn't have any copper, it doesn't have any tubes. It's a new breed, a world of its own."
There appears to be a strong tie between design and fiction, which helps give the fantastical elements a sense of plausibility. In addition to serving as a breeding ground for political discord and a debilitating plague, Dunwall is a fishing town, where knifelike ships drift across the waterfront displaying captured whales as gruesome trophies. The oil is actually used as a power source within the city, so that ship isn't just a random detail, but an integral part of the city's operation that ties into things like the Tallboy enemies that patrol streets on menacing stilts and deadly energy gates that bar access to parts of the city.
The remotely believable elements are complemented by supernatural elements, which allow the playable character, Corvo, to teleport from the street to high rooftops, summon swarms of ravenous rats and even take possession of the bodies of small animals to, for example, infiltrate buildings through sewer systems in the body of a fish.
Corvo is a magically gifted assassin, framed for the murder of the Empress he used to protect. A figure called the Outsider, described by Arkane as a mixture between God and the devil, visits Corvo in prison and imprints him with a magical aptitude for unknown reasons. Maybe the Outsider has a sinister plan for Corvo, or maybe he just wants to see what might happen by giving power to someone with a sizeable chip on their shoulder. Corvo then escapes, and proceeds to take on assassination missions.
While not an open world game, the structure of Dishonored's missions means there'll be room to explore. You'll find bone charms and other bonuses hidden around environments, high on crumbling rooftops or buried deep in the bellies of buildings, all of which confer statistical bonuses. You can build Corvo to be a stealthy assassin or sword-fighting warrior, and between missions you'll return to a hub world where powers and weapons can be upgraded to align with your desired play style.
The stealth system seems particularly well-developed. A short-range teleport called blink lets you hop between areas of shadow, as well as climb to high places like ceiling beams to cross open, populated spaces undetected. You'll lean around corners to see what lies ahead, drag bodies out of sight, peek through keyholes to eavesdrop on conversations, and employ a dark vision power that lets you see through walls and observe the vision cones of patrolling guards. Enemies will notice if fellow guards go missing and have various stages of alertness, and you'll need to take distance from target, light level and sound levels into account if you want to remain undetected.
"Sound has a propagation system," said Raphael Colantonio, Arkane president and co-creative director on Dishonored. "It goes through doors and if the door is locked the sound is muffled, which is pretty cool from a stealth perspective. You need a good awareness of your environment and where the NPCs are."
You'll find plenty of tools for combat, including spring razor traps that can be set on the ground and blast out sharp metal when triggered, a short sword and one-handed crossbow. Mixing these together with the supernatural abilities like wind blasts to shatter doors or reflect incoming projectiles, a time stop to get out of the way of gunfire or reconfigure a battle scene so, when the flow of time resumes, an enemy gets hit with his own bullet, it seems like there's plenty of room to be creative with navigating environments and taking out targets. You can even possess people in Dunwall, or save yourself from taking significant fall damage by possessing a rat on the way down. While inside a rodent you'll need to be careful, though, because nearby guards will try to stomp you.
While the action is going on, Arkane doesn't want to interrupt to deliver story, instead letting you discover it on your own. "There's a lot of environmental storytelling, notes you can read," said Colantonio. "We try to steer away from the cut-scenes that removes the player's control, though we have a few of those for very important moments. Mostly it stays in first-person and you can move around as the story's being told to you."
"Story is not the focus of video games," added Smith. "For us, we want something universal to draw the player in, then the main star is the gameplay. For us, the dynamic narrative that emerges from what you did and how that differs from what I did is the star."
Hopefully the actual experience of playing matches up to the promise of what Arkane's saying. Based on what's been shown off so far, that seems likely. Dishonored is expected to launch sometime in 2012 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
I'm at exactly the same point. Just finished Dawnguard (thought it was great). I've a couple older games I never finished to tide me over like Dead Space and Fallout 3, but I'm looking forward to Dishonoured more than any other game this fall.
